#Fews into red review series

And as in Sondheim shows like вЂњMerrily We Roll Along,вЂќ вЂњGypsyвЂќ and вЂњSweeney Todd,вЂќ they wrestle with the question of whether getting what you want is actually good for you. Characters weigh personal desire against the needs of the greater community. In вЂњMaybe TheyвЂ™re Magic,вЂќ the bakerвЂ™s wife interrogates the ethics of ambition. And unease already glimmers, firefly-like, among the trees. Jack, now rich, reunites with his cow (expertly puppeteered by Kennedy Kanagawa). Little Red and her grandmother (Annie Golden) are released from the wolfвЂ™s stomach. Rapunzel (Shereen Pimentel, mellow in an underwritten role) gets hers (Jason Forbach, in for Jordan Donica). When tales have circulated since the premodern era, itвЂ™s no spoiler to say that they all end happily. Within three nights they must obtain a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn and a slipper as pure as gold. Desperate for a child, they heed the witch next door (Heather Headley, a diva in a frowzy wig and claws) and head into the forest - here, a bare stage ornamented with the set designer David RockwellвЂ™s elegant birch trunks. At its whirling center are a humble baker (Neil Patrick Harris, with down-to-the-millisecond comic timing) and his wife (the Grammy-winning singer and songwriter and recent Broadway baby Sara Bareilles, no slouch). The show, as ever, collides characters drawn from a half-dozen tales in the European folk tradition - Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack the Giant Killer, a prince or two. So if you know a spell to charm the secondary market, cast it now. Her вЂњInto the WoodsвЂќ runs through May 15 only a few tickets remain. (LetвЂ™s just say that when Rob Marshall has directed a star-crammed film version of a show within the last decade, it is no longer a hidden gem.)Д«ut that mission has expanded, unearthing something as glorious as Lear deBessonetвЂ™s revival. Which makes the fractured fairy tales of вЂњInto the Woods,вЂќ Stephen Sondheim and James LapineвЂ™s sweet-sour 1986 musical, a peculiar choice.

#Fews into red review series

The album feels lost in the best possible way, coating pensive songs with a sheen of cool remove, but not so cool as to obscure the vulnerable moments coexisting with the noise.For nearly three decades, the Encores! concert series at New York City Center has upheld a specific mission - excavating the hidden gems of American musical theater, burnishing them to a fully orchestrated shine. Fews grow as a band on this effort by putting their struggle to balance sonic upheaval and messy, ungrounded feelings in the center of every track. One of the strengths of the album is how it moves between claustrophobia and clarity, gracefully switching gears from cluttered, repetitive blasters like 'Anything Else' to more spare (if dour) tunes like 'Suppose' or dreary album standout '97.' Into Red feels distant but still sees the band reaching for more emotionally connective expressions. Angst is the primary emotion on much of Into Red, from the dissociating narration of early-Radiohead-esque album opener 'Quiet' to the grinding, bass-driven 'Business Man.' Fews walk a thin line between dissonance and pop throughout Into Red, always tempering their knotty post-punk impulses with moments of soaring harmony. The song nods to both the uneasy vocal delivery and eerie songcraft of the Pixies as well as the walls of guitar noise implemented by less championed shoegaze acts like Loop or the Telescopes.

The terse and moody song finds partially spoken vocals bending around verses before exploding into enormous choruses. Lead single 'Paradiso' highlights some of these shifts in the band's style. Second album Into Red expands on the tension-heavy tones of Means, retaining some of that album's repetitive rhythmic churn while branching out into more dynamic songwriting and exploring shoegazey guitar tones and angular approaches to songwriting. Working mostly out of London, the band had roots in separate Swedish towns and grew from an online friendship between Malmo musician Fred Rundqvis and David Alexander, who moved from San Francisco to Sweden to start Fews with Rundqvis in 2013.

Dark and textural rock outfit Fews emerged from scattered origins with a bold 2016 debut entitled Means.